Suicide Squad Proves DC Executives are Actually Three Babies and a Monkey

I’m generally a fairly happy guy, but there’s a few things in the world that truly bum me out. When I reach for a box of delicious Cinnamon Toast Crunch only to find out that said box is empty, that bums me out. When I propose a genius fantasy football trade and get shot down, that bums me out. That being said, the worst of the worst is when a movie doesn’t live up to its expectations (I’m looking at you, Cars 2).

So when I jumped on the hype train for “Suicide Squad” well over a year ago, I tried to pace myself. I knew that if I got too excited for it early on, I would almost inevitably be disappointed. At first, I couldn’t help it, the possibilities seemed endless. Jared Leto looked like David Bowie jumped in a giant bag of flour and then proceeded to Nickelodeon-slime his hair just before hitting the tattoo parlor. And Margot Robbie looked as good as ever, even as an institutionalized crazy lady. Will Smith was in his usual form of, “I still act like the Fresh Prince, but I can knock your teeth out.”

How could they possibly mess this up? It seemed too easy, nearly impossible to ruin.

All of these thoughts were bouncing around my superhero-loving brain day and night, and then I saw a spectacular pile of garbage called Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of whatever we titled it, we’ve already lost your interest. I won’t spend much time here, but what a terrible film. Intended to be a sequel to the last DC film I will probably ever enjoy, Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman answered the question no one was asking: What would happen if the two heroes got in a bar fight with a paper-thin plot and a terrible resolution? The results were not great. After that traumatic experience, my hopes for Suicide Squad were briefly dashed.

But in a few weeks and three therapy sessions later, I was once again hyped for the film, a film that was gaining quite a bit of attention.

The time finally came to experience this movie that I had been itching to watch for over a year. The critic reviews were already out, and they weren’t nearly as pretty as Margot Robbie. Most critics hated the film, and I scrambled to find any excuse I could to dismiss their warnings. “Critics hate comic book movies”, “these two critics said polar opposite things, I clearly can’t trust either of them.”

The list goes on, so, still crossing my fingers, I entered the theater.

No need to fear, I won’t give away any spoilers, but I will say that I loved the first half of the film. It was a little jumbled, but I enjoyed watching director David Ayer’s take on the background stories of some of the characters. Once we got into the action, the film completely falls apart.

There was zero story whatsoever, and I’m a sucker for a good story. Basically, it appears that they took the MOUNTAINS OF POTENTIAL that was Suicide Squad and said, “we see where we COULD go with this film, we clearly see how great it could be, but who would want that? Let’s just make them fight zombies in a blacked out city and see where it goes.” (My apologies, that’s a slight spoiler, but yeah, zombies.)

For the last half hour of the film, I had no idea where they were going to go with it. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I don’t think they did either. It never reached a clear ending because it never had a clear story. Suffice to say, I’m bummed.

This movie felt like “Family Guy” was remaking Ghostbusters, while it could’ve been the defining movie of the summer. Whoever is at the helm of DC’s current trajectory of films, absolutely needs to be fired. Not to mention their competition is killing it right now. Marvel is redefining comic book movies, and DC is actually regressing. It’s honestly sad to watch.

Call me when DC makes a movie that can compete with a 4 AM infomercial, at least they have a point.